Day Retreat

Mindfulness in an urban environment. How do we manage? What are the challenges?

Special guest Paramabodhi will lead us in meditation, reflection and discussion as we step back for a day from our usual routine to explore ways to respond with more kindness and care when we return.

Paramabodhi helped get the SFBC going back in the early 90's before going back to London to work on his art.  He has remained a good friend to us and visits regularly to share his interest in Mindfulness practice and creativity. 

If an approach to practice is not working for you, do you just carry on doggedly hoping that it will somehow improve? It’s not very likely that this will work!

This is as true of dhyana or absorption practice as any other area. So, on this Day Retreat Tejananda will be suggesting approaches people have found to be helpful and effective in opening to dhyana through exploring body, breath and awareness. By exploring and uncovering the actual nature of our bodily experience, resources for entering dhyana can be discovered right here, already present – just waiting to be noticed.

The anapanasati (mindfulness of breathing) sutta is a much-loved teaching from the Buddha that quietly and beautifully guides us towards real tranquility and wisdom through awareness of the breathing body.  

On this day retreat we will explore experientially the key themes from the sutta - body, feelings, mind and wisdom - to enhance our experience and practice of both mindfulness and metta (kindness).

The day will include meditation, reflection, body work and communication. 

In the Honeyball Sutta (a teaching of the Buddha), the Buddha describes the conditions that give rise to conflict. And with a clear understanding of these conditions, we can also see a pathway leading to the dissolving of conflict and the arising of peace. Please join us to explore this ancient wisdom and how to apply it to our modern lives.

See also our April Sangha Night Series: Ancient Wisdom for the Modern World.

The only thing that will not change is change itself.

It is through change that we grow, heal, learn, engage, suffer, age, and die. We experience pain and disappointment as well as joy and gratitude.

Through the acceptance of change we can transform our habits, our hindrances, negative mental states and emotions, and see through our delusions; we can tread the creative path toward liberation.

How would it be if we could look at everything that happens in our world, including, or perhaps especially, the annoying or difficult things, as tools to help to wake up?  In February we'll explore this question in many different ways as we kick off our 2019 theme - Bringing Everything to the Path - with this Day Retreat and a new Sangha Night Series. 

Buddhist Ethics - it's not about being good.

Join us for a simple morning of meditation - sit, walk, sit.

No instruction - just perhaps a couple of poems or relevant teachings - but there will be an opportunity for anyone interested to hang out and talk about meditation afterwards.

Open to anyone with a meditation practice. 

AWAKENING TO OUR OWN IMAGINATION

Led by Prasadachitta

Our imagination is arguably to most powerful force that works upon the mind. We have only limited evidence of what is happening around us and we rely on our imagination to fill in the blanks. Even what is happening within the sphere of our own being must rely on imagination to have any coherent story or meaning. 

Our theme for October is Creative practice.  During this daylong workshop Acarasiddhi will share ways to connect with our natural creativity through writing.  

The workshop will be positive, friendly, encouraging and productive, with helpful and inspiring writing exercises to get us started, and reflections on the link between words and practice. 

No writing or any other experience required. Bring your curiosity and your favorite writing tools (although pens and paper will also be available if you need them).

The way I see it, meditators and artists are often on a similar mission. The mission to get close to reality. The mission to have an experience that is, somehow, ‘truer’. 

We’ll take the essential Buddhist teaching of the vimoksa mukhas, this teaching points to the idea that we can find doorways to freedom in our own minds, and we'll ask if art can open these doorways? 

Whether you make art or simply value it in your life, if you want to make new connections between meditation and art this day retreat is for you.